"From time to time I would touch his nose to check that he was still breathing. As long as he was alive, I would be too," is how Dayana Patiño told the BBC of the hours she spent trapped with her newborn in the rubble of a collapsed building after the double earthquake in Venezuela.

The mother said that her son, Juan David, just 18 days old, gave her the “motivation to stay awake and alert.”

Images of the rescue have gone around the world, turning Juan David into a symbol of hope in Venezuela, a country devastated by the two earthquakes that shook it on Wednesday and caused the death of at least 1,450 people.

Tens of thousands more people are missing in what the country's acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, has called the “most brutal natural catastrophe” in Venezuelan history.

The search efforts continue, but hopes of finding more survivors are fading.

“I don't know how I didn't let go.”

On Sunday, at a clinic in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, Dayana told the BBC of the terrifying hours she spent under the rubble, hugging her young son and praying for them to be saved.

He was washing dishes in his apartment, located on the eighth floor in the coastal region of La Guaira (in the north of the country), when the earthquakes occurred. She immediately ran to protect her son in her arms, thinking that it was “just a slight tremor.”

"I felt like I was flying. Then I felt like I was sinking into water and land, and then I fell into the hole where I was trapped. I don't know how I didn't let go of my baby while I was flying; I was crushed against the furniture," she said.

She said she started screaming instantly, but soon realized that no one could hear her.

“I told myself that I was not going to waste my energy: I would scream when necessary, when I heard voices or footsteps nearby,” she said.

"I don't know how I stayed calm, as my left leg was trapped under the concrete. I couldn't move. My temple was pressed against a rock."

Dayana said she regained hope when she felt a Bible under her.

“That's where my fight to survive began,” he said.

In the darkness of the rubble, he managed to see a “little point of light that looked like the moon.”

She said her rescue came after hearing her brother calling her name.

“I told myself, ‘This is my only chance.’ I screamed at the top of my lungs… I screamed, ‘Here I am!’ with all the vigor I could, and he responded, ‘I found you and I promise you that I won't leave until I get you out of there.'”

He kept his promise and a delicate rescue operation followed to extract the mother and baby from the rubble on Thursday night.

Dayana suffered injuries to both legs during the earthquake, while Juan, fortunately, only suffered minor injuries.

Gerson, Dayana's husband, had just arrived home and parked the car when the earthquakes hit. He managed to jump a fence and reach safety.

Seeing what his apartment building had looked like, he feared the worst.

The moment of his wife and baby's rescue was “a miracle,” he said.

In the images of the rescue, which have been widely disseminated, Gerson is seen squeezing his eyes and throwing his head back, looking at the sky, while hugging his son, overcome with emotion.

"It was indescribable. I thought they had died. And when I saw my son, I felt like I was being born again. I couldn't believe it... I felt like life was coming back to me," he told the BBC about that moment.

Gerson and Dayana's house has been destroyed, along with all their belongings, and they are devastated because their dog is still missing, but they say that now they will "start from scratch."

“We lost almost everything, but here we are… We will rebuild everything we lost,” Gerson promised.

* With additional information from Euridice Ledezma.